The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1887-11-15
CAPITAL Punishment.


believe in the dogma of universal sal
walton, or reject the vicariOus atone
ment of Christ, should be opposed to
the death penalty. Their opposition
to this doctrine is based on a fallacy
namely that temporal death is the
greatest of temporal evils. If we are
to give credence to the Bible, its histo-
ries and teachings, as of God, and of
paramount authority, then the con-
clusion is just that sin is the cause of
death, or that which makes it neces-
sary, and by all rational deduction. the
effect can never become greater than
its cause.
The object of the Gospel-Christ's
atonement-was not to save us from
temporal death, but it was TO save
from sin Matt. i:2D, which alone
makes temporal death terror and an
evil.
Another faIlaey is that capital pun
ishment deprives its victims of the OPP
portunity of reformation. If the fruits
of reformed life were indispensable to
salvation, then the plea would avail.
But as penitent faith in Christ, as of
the thief on the cross, is the only
precedent indispensable to salvation,
tine culprit's reformation is of no value
in this paramount quest. He who,
under the impending death penalty, is
not moved to accept the offers of mer-
cy, its easy conditions, would not be
likely to repent, believe, reform, un-
der prolonged Imprisonment or other
Communication.
The death of Christ is an irrefragi-
bic argument establishing the necessity
of the death penalty. If the
presumptuous violation of the will of
God in no case subjects anyone to
the death penalty, then Christ died
for nothing nobody. The institution
of the temporal death penalty for
breach of law. under the Sinaitic code,
in its unremitting demands, was typi-
cal of the retributive death penalty to
come, that can only be obvisted by
flight to the ante-typical city of re-
fuge-Christ's atonement.
The typical city of refuge of the
law gave the murderer, though peni-
tent, up to the avenger the death
penalty. But not so with its auto
type. The "uttermost" of superlatlve
enormity, that fees to this-the blood
of atonement, the cleft in the crock of
ages is safe from the demands of the
avenger, the "wrath to come," but
not from temporal death. For the
scepter of Judah, with its avenging
function, "passed" from Judah to the
Roman Caesar" to whom its func-
ton is confirmed in Rom. xiii, as the
powers that be, who are not to bear
the sword in vain, but is the appoint
ed "avenger of God" The sword is
the symbol of the death-dealing power
and not of imprisonment, or other
Communication of the death penalty.
These powers, as "of God," have no
liberty, as of God, to remit the penal
ties of law, in its finding or execution.
The execution may interpose to cor
rect the mistakes or perversions of the
judiciary-the courts of justice. But
more than this is to "break the bands
and cast the cords" of God from us.
(Psa. g.
A human tendency is to remit, re-
lax in the administration of law.
Society suffers more from the major
non.adminlstration of law than from
the want of law.
The same is affirmable as to the neg
lect of required discipline in the
churches. This objection to capital
punishment comes from human in
herent restiveness under the restraints
imposed by the will of God. Its lam
guage is: "Our lips are our own
who is Lord over us" (Psa. xii y
Human sympathy, ignorance of God.
or not to know or fear Him, as in
Heb. viii, lone conceptions of the holt
ness of God and the enormity of sin,
may also induce aversion to capital
punishment.
The remission of authority, Gods
law in the family relation, will induce
the remission of legal penalty in the
civil relation and in the churches. |
The assumption is, by some, that MUIR
der decreases under legal commute
ton of the death penalty. Murder is
not the standard of perditional enor-
nifty. 1t is of the sixth grade in the
moral law. The first table takes pre-
cedence of the prohibition of murder,
and the second table, that is, the vio-